Neuroscience and conflict resolution

May 2012

May 28, 2012

For those of you have joined me on my quest to learn the best way to use music in conflict resolution, here's an article that quotes some of the best music researchers. Reading it will remind you of some of music's effects. From "Music: It's in your head, changing your brain" (CNN):

Here's one way you might not already be using music: Making a deliberate effort to use music to alter mood. Listen to something that makes you energetic at the beginning of the day, and listen to a soothing song after an argument, [Daniel] Levitin says.

Is there anyone reading this who has not experienced music changing his or her mood? And who has not seen a shift in mood move parties in a dispute towards resolution? So if music can shift mood, can it facilitate conflict management? I have met many people who think so but the challenge so far has been in finding the right music, knowing that the effects of music are not universal. A song that annoys me may lead someone else to a state of calm.

From the article, more properties of music that might be beneficial in mediation.

"I think there's enough evidence to say that musical experience, musical exposure, musical training, all of those things change your brain," says Dr. Charles Limb, associate professor of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at Johns Hopkins University. "It allows you to think in a way that you used to not think, and it also trains a lot of other cognitive facilities that have nothing to do with music."

...

Music is strongly associated with the brain's reward system. It's the part of the brain that tells us if things are valuable, or important or relevant to survival, said Robert Zatorre, professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Montreal Neurological Institute.

May 20, 2012

Why are neuroscientists interested in the skills of magicians? Because magicians have long known traits and states of the brain that brain scientists are just now learning. Why am I so interested in what magicians do to so masterfully simulate magic? Because they know the value of paying attention to attention, a critical skill in the my approach to conflict resolution. That's why I often—in programs, presentations, and with clients—use this phrase to describe my approach to mediation: Attention choreography™.

Because of the topic's importance to my professional (and personal) interests, I have blogged about magic many times in the past here and here. (Scroll down at each of these links to see many posts.) Today I point your way to still another piece on magic.

Why are scientists working with sleight-of-hand artists? Their tricks, honed through the decades, have revealed that people respond to certain situations in specific ways. Like detectives looking for new leads to solve a mystery, scientists can mine magicians’ knowledge for ideas to test in the lab. And for the magicians, understanding principles about the brain—that is, why a trick works the way it does—can suggest new ways to advance their art as they develop new tricks or improve existing ones. (The article, “What Can Magicians Teach Us about the Brain?”, provides some more background and a November 2008 Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper coauthored by neuroscientists and magicians.)

The conference explored several aspects of attention. [Stephen] Macknik started things off by explaining how the brain constructs our experience of reality from a truly imperfect set of biophysical tools, resulting in a “grand simulation of everything around you.” For instance, “You have one megapixel eyeballs compared with your eight megapixel camera,” he said. In addition to collecting a relatively small amount of information from a scene, the eye itself has a large blind spot, where the optic nerve that ferries information to the brain pierces the light-collecting retina at the back of the eye; the brain fills in the visual gap to create the illusion of your vision acting like a seamless movie camera.

Our internally produced picture of reality is subjective—and subject to influence. “Magicians are the performance artists of attention and awareness,” Macknick said. ...

Click to read the rest. Wouldn't you like to go to one of those Neuromagic conferences? For me, it would be a magical trip, a dream. Maybe I can learn to conjure myself to the next one?

May 19, 2012

By now, most of us paying attention to the role of the mind and the brain in conflict know that the brain often reshapes memories, if not making them up entirely. Life story writers are often writing fiction. Tellers of tall tales may believe they are telling the truth. Witnesses in court can be sincere but very wrong. The stories told by parties to a dispute may be inaccurate.

I've always been proud that my columns are 100% accurate, which isn't all that hard since I write only about me. But it turns out that I'm an awful source. I get dates and places wrong. I replace former girlfriends with my lovely wife Cassandra in many stories, despite the fact that after 14 years together it would be far more exciting to do the opposite. I know about these errors because camp friends e-mail me corrections, IMDb.com shows that the movie I thought Cassandra and I went to see together had left theaters before we met, and the mullet photos of me on the Internet prove that I could not have lost my virginity at 17.

May 18, 2012

As they have been doing for years now, people are still Tweeting and reTweeting links to questionable press releases and articles about psychology, biology, and neuroscience. I watch these fly by in the Twitter stream and wonder why people do this? What is their motivation and reward for throwing junk into the stream?

Tweety Birds are what I call these people who pass links along using as much discrimination as people playing Gossip at a party.

[M]edia outlets rely on press releases to both receive and understand new research. Sites like Science Daily and Eureka Alert post these press releases as soon as the embargo lifts. Since research and science is complicated, reporters rely on these sites not only to find the day's latest findings, but to understand what a 60 page write-up means for non-science people. University communications departments put the findings into nice digestible little sound-bites, complete with quotes from the researchers. And since they too want pick-up, they often slap their own snappy headline on the write-up.

Snappy headlines are not the only problem. As I discuss here and here, the press releases often do not report the research accurately. When inaccurate press releases get passed along in the Twitter stream, that inaccuracy problem is compounded. I again ask: Why are people choosing to be a part of this compounding? What is their motivation? What is their reward? I really am mystified.

May 16, 2012

Neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behaviour generally posits that brain mechanisms will ultimately suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena. This assumption stems from the idea that the brain is made up entirely of material particles and fields, and that all causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience can therefore be formulated solely in terms of properties of these elements. Thus, terms having intrinsic mentalistic and/or experiential content (e.g. ‘feeling’, ‘knowing’ and ‘effort’) are not included as primary causal factors. This theoretical restriction is motivated primarily by ideas about the natural world that have been known to be fundamentally incorrect for more than three-quarters of a century. Contemporary basic physical theory differs profoundly from classic physics on the important matter of how the consciousness of human agents enters into the structure of empirical phenomena. The new principles contradict the older idea that local mechanical processes alone can account for the structure of all observed empirical data. Contemporary physical theory brings directly and irreducibly into the overall causal structure certain psychologically described choices made by human agents about how they will act. This key development in basic physical theory is applicable to neuroscience, and it provides neuroscientists and psychologists with an alternative conceptual framework for describing neural processes. Indeed, owing to certain structural features of ion channels critical to synaptic function, contemporary physical theory must in principle be used when analysing human brain dynamics. The new framework, unlike its classic-physics-based predecessor, is erected directly upon, and is compatible with, the prevailing principles of physics. It is able to represent more adequately than classic concepts the neuroplastic mechanisms relevant to the growing number of empirical studies of the capacity of directed attention and mental effort to systematically alter brain function.

May 10, 2012

Being able to draw well can be somewhat like attentive and complete listening. For many people, learning a certain kind of drawing helps them to be better listeners. A receptive state that enables this kind of drawing, once learned, can be transferred to listening.

Good news: (Almost) anyone can master this state.

Today I will recommend two books to help you practice being receptive in drawing. In a later post, we will look at how to transfer that receptivity to situations in which you want to listen deeply. However, many of you probably will be able to transfer the skill as soon as you use it during drawing.

I initiated a seven-year search to discover which functions of the brain artists use when drawing and the causes of the more common problems experienced by my students. I discovered that the right tools for drawing (and painting) are present in everyone's brains but we have other mental processes that subvert the activity of drawing.

It is in order to really see, to see ever deeper, ever more intensely, hence to be fully aware and alive, that I draw what the Chinese call 'The Ten Thousand Things' around me. Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world.

I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.

One might paraphrase the two authors and say:

The right tools for listening are present in everyone's brain but we have other mental processes that subvert the activity of listening.

Listening is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world.

Both drawing and listening can be vehicles for mindfulness and discovery, and I have found that the underlying state for one can be a door to the other. Moving easily between the vehicles will be the focus of another post later this month.

May 09, 2012

I've been reading Psychology's Ghosts: The Crisis in the Profession and the Way Back and have recommended it to others several times. Reading the first chapter can help one become a much more critical reader of research. Jerome Kagan, the author, points out that behaviors and biological responses are influenced by properties of the brain, an individual's prior experience, and the setting of the behavior or response. He argues that sometimes research ignores that context. In fact, the chapter is titled "Missing Contexts." I urge you to get your hands on a copy of the book and at least read that chapter. You may look at research with a wiser eye; I will.

To me, the entire book has been stimulating. It includes many, many points I want to remember or return to for more thought. Although I don't agree with everything I have read, I am never bored. Here's an example of a point that I found particularly interesting.

A few psychologists [have suggested] that the physical pain of a broken leg shares important features with the “pain” of social rejection. They called the latter “social pain.” A major reason for implying that physical pain shares important features with the feeling accompanying rejection is that a small number of brain sites are active in both states. This argument has flaws. The amygdala is activated by pictures of erotic couples as well as bloody surgical operations. That fact does not mean that scenes of sex and surgery evoke a common psychological state. Both my visual and motor cortex are active when I write, sip coffee, tie my shoes, pick up a soiled sock, and cut an apple, but these five acts do not belong to the same psychological category because my intentions and psychological states are different in each of these actions. It is misleading, therefore, to call the state produced by social exclusion "social pain." Exclusion or rejection can evoke anxiety, anger, sadness, or self-hatred, but none of these states could be confused with the sensation of a toothache.

Poets, novelists, and lyricists are permitted to write about the "pain of love," but scientists should not treat casually constructed metaphors as deep insights into human nature. I hope no psychologist decides that hunger for food resembles a hunger for friendships. The positing of social pain is another example of the psychologists' fatal attraction to positing abstract categories based primarily on a common semantic term. ...

May 07, 2012

In every program I present, I advocate the use of images in addition to words to facilitate communication. Last weekend at the 19th Annual Nothwest Dispute Resolution Conference, that advocacy was taken to whole new level because I was fortunate to have Nancy White graphically record my presentation. Take a look at her masterpiece above (click to enlarge). It is obvious why she is one of the world's top gurus of the processes of graphic recording and graphic facilitation!

Visual thinking is an approach that uses art to develop critical thinking, communication and visual literacy skills. Incorporating sketching and visual note-taking skills for meeting facilitation in real time instead of using PowerPoint presentations is an effective way to solve problems, articulate ideas and communicate with clients and team members.

Here are ten things about visual thinking that will help you to facilitate a highly interactive, productive and enjoyable meeting.

May 03, 2012

After reading books such as Psychology's Ghosts: The Crisis in the Profession and the Way Back, I am even more likely to see most research studies as, at best, clues, and clues only only in the material world. That's how I view this study written about below, but I post the news release here because I can never be reminded too often that we are each different; this study is another reminder that one size does not fit all.

Washington, DC — Whether someone is a “go-getter” or a “slacker” may depend on individual differences in the brain chemical dopamine, according to new research in the May 2 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings suggest that dopamine affects cost-benefit analyses.

The study found that people who chose to put in more effort — even in the face of long odds — showed greater dopamine response in the striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, areas of the brain important in reward and motivation. In contrast, those who were least likely to expend effort showed increased dopamine response in the insula, a brain region involved in perception, social behavior, and self-awareness.

Researchers led by Michael Treadway, a graduate student working with David Zald, PhD, at Vanderbilt University, asked participants to rapidly press a button in order to earn varying amounts of money. Participants got to decide how hard they were willing to work depending on the odds of a

The first meeting of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition occurred earlier this year. Matt Armstrong, one of the attendees, blogged about it at his Mountain Runner. Excerpt:

What if you put neuroscientists, social scientists, conflict resolution experts, and diplomats together in a room? Is there something to the “human dimension” of conflict that the science of the brain can inform the art of conflict resolution and mitigation? The Project on Justice in Times of Transition, in partnership with the SaxeLab at MIT, launched the initiative “Neuroscience and Social Conflict: Identifying New Approaches for the 21st Century” to find out.

The first meeting was February 9-11, 2012, at MIT in Boston. PJTT and SaxeLab brought together a high-level group of experienced leaders from the Middle East, South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Central America with conflict conflict resolution experts, social psychologists, and leading neuroscientists to survey the latest findings in neuroscience and brain research to brainstorm and exchange ideas for addressing conflict.

I attended the February meeting and it was an eye-opening few days that started early and continued over dinner into the night. The presentations were honest, devoid of grandiose assertions of magic bullets, and each were followed by collegial discussions fueled by fresh questions and ideas.

Rebecca Saxe, the Director of SaxeLab, highlighted some of the general assumptions most scientists looking at conflict and conflict resolution share:

People respond to conflict as human beings and there is some generalized experience that can be captured

Behaviors can reflect emotions, associations, norms, and narratives that are not accessible through cognition or introspection

People resist changing their minds and simple persuasion is almost never sufficient to make them change

The science presentations shared research on how particular parts of the brain were involved with specific behavior and emotions, such as fear. ...